Documentation

A selection of the major bibliographical and statistical resources on public health and related like health care system organisation in France and in other industrialised nations, epidemiology, social security, demographics, statistics...

Updated monthly, this section presents a
selection of books, websites and working papers
published by world-wide universities and research
institutes specialised in Health Economics and related
domains.

Recent Publications

IRDES publishing

This exploratory qualitative study aims to identify the dimensions of satisfaction with medical care and care coordination for older adults over age 70. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in spring 2015 with a sample of 18 people aged 72 to 90 years, living at home or in institution, as well as 4 informal carers looking after people suffering from cognitive problems. All respondents (including informal carers), regardless of their type of accommodation, agree that the most important dimension in medical care is the quality of their relationship with health professionals. There seems to be a significant room for improvement in that relational quality and people's satisfaction which can be achieved often by means of simple gestures. Respondents evoke the importance of being well informed about their care process, having the opportunity to express themselves; and they stress the importance of communication and coordination between different healthcare professionals involved in their care.

Increased life expectancy is accompanied by an increase in years of living with one, or even several, chronic diseases causing an accumulation of drug therapies, thus increasing the iatrogenic risks. In recent years, public policies to reduce polypharmacy in the elderly have been established. Their assessment requires easy-to-produce indicators from large population databases. Two indicators are considered here: the "cumulative" polypharmacy indicator, which takes into account all drugs administered over a given period, and the "continuous" polypharmacy indicator, which focuses on drugs taken regularly over a prolonged period of time. The innovative aspect of this work is the consideration of combination drugs and quarterly packs in the calculations. The polypharmacy prevalence varies from 27% to 40% depending on the indicator, with or without consideration of the combination drugs and large packs.

International Networks

IRDES is hosting for four months, until July 2016, Ryozo Matsuda, professor of health policy at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, who will work on a comparative analysis of regional governance in France, England and Germany.

The Piperska Group Catherine Sermet is a member of The Piperska Group which is a multidisciplinary network of professionals who share the common vision of enhancing the health of the public and the individual patient in a sustainable way through exchanging ideas and cooperation around the rational use of pharmacological and related therapies. Next meeting: Leiden, The Netherlands, 31 May and 1 June 2016.